Research award to professor in optical communication

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Professor Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe has been presented with the Director Ib Henriksen Foundation’s Researcher Award 2017. He is being honoured for his research within optical communication.

The growing demand for increased Internet capacity and speed, so that we can transfer data, as well as greater focus on using less energy for this requires new technological solutions. These are being developed within the field of optical communication, and constitute the cornerstone of Professor Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe’s research.

Now, the professor from DTU Fotonik is being honoured for his research with the Director Ib Henriksen Foundation’s Researcher Award 2017, which is a personal prize of DKK 250,000.

Heads basic research centre
Since 2015, Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe has been head of the basic research centre SPOC (Silicon Photonics for Optical Communications) which is financed by the Danish National Research Foundation. With SPOC, Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe has brought together a team of elite researchers (from DTU, the University of Copenhagen and internationally) to collaborate on exploring and developing solutions to major challenges in optical communication systems.

Professor’s research group honoured by EU in 2016
A major breakthrough was achieved in 2016 when a SPOC initiative showed that a single nonlinear optical chip could create light in a rainbow spectrum of a high enough quality to carry 661 Tbit/s of data, which corresponds to more than twice as much as current global Internet traffic. Such a chip would potentially replace many parallel laser sources, and thus considerably reduce the Internet’s energy consumption. In 2016, this achievement was rewarded with the EU’s Horizon 2020 Prize ‘Breaking the Optical Transmission Barriers’.

Impressive world records
Leif Katsuo Oxenløwe’s work has always been characterized by impressive demonstrations with world records within his field, such as maximum data volume of light from a single laser source, the world’s fastest optical chip for optical signal processing, the world’s fastest serial data signal, the world’s first on-chip time lens and several others.

DTU Fotonik's research covers a broad spectrum of fields within Photonics Engineering.
It ranges from basic scientific explorations into light-matter interaction, via communication technologies,
lasers and sensors, to collaborations with architects and designers on LED light sources of the future.The department focuses on the application oriented uses of our research and on solving the societal challenges that we face.